ASU Men’s Basketball: Sun Devils shooting struggles again versus Utes

(Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN)

It was a wild game, one that ASU was seconds away from winning. But Utah’s Sedrick Barefield had other ideas.

The junior guard hit a running three to tie the game with 3.2 seconds to play. It followed an and-one layup by Tra Holder that put ASU ahead 69-66 with nine seconds to spare.

“It happens, he hit a good shot,” freshman guard Remy Martin said. “I think it’s up to me, because I was guarding him, to at least know that we’re up three and he shouldn’t get a wide open three, but that’s something we’re going to learn and let’s move on to the next (game).”

Barefield scored 6 of Utah’s 11 points in overtime to lead the upset over No. 21 ASU 80-77, ironically the same score ASU beat them by in Salt Lake City two and a half weeks prior.

There were a multitude of ways ASU could’ve fine tuned its play, but the most pressing and obvious was scoring. It was another hot and cold night for the Sun Devils, something that’s become the norm throughout Pac-12 play.

To put it in perspective, they were averaging around 91 points per contest after their 12-0 start to the season. In their 8 conference games since then, including two that’ve gone to overtime, they’ve scored between 72 and 81 points every time.

Thursday night, the Sun Devils were outstanding from the foul line, making 11-14 shots. Their field goal shooting did nothing but decline though from start to finish.

ASU was off to a hot start, with Tra Holder knocking down shots and Romello White getting buckets in the post en route to a 7-10 start from the field almost nine minutes in. At that point, they were looking more like the team that beat Xavier in November and Kansas in December.

But that didn’t last, as the Devils shot 35 percent for the rest of the half to finish with a 48 percent field goal percentage through 20 minutes. They didn’t stray far from the previous mark, making 36 percent of their shots in the second half and then going 3-10 in overtime.

“We got to connect when we have open shots as the game progresses,” coach Bobby Hurley said. “We didn’t do that consistently enough to score enough points to win.”

ASU’s second and third leading scorers, senior guards Shannon Evans II and Kodi Justice, struggled as much as anyone from the field. While the duo did contribute by going a combined 6-14 from beyond the arc, they went a total of 2-12 on two-point field goal attempts.

They weren’t alone, as freshman Romello White, the team’s fourth leading scorer and top big man scored six points in the first six minutes, then only got another two points the rest of the way.

This was in part due to the play of Utah’s sophomore center Jayce Johnson, who came off the bench and dominated White at times throughout the first half and early into the second. He shot 5-7 from the field and had season bests with 15 points and three blocks.

“(We) didn’t do a great job with their backup center Johnson” Hurley said. “We didn’t defend the interior in that first half the way we needed to.”

For all that ASU could have done better, Utah played well.

Where they really got ASU was the bench points, outscoring the Sun Devils 40-24. The Utes also capitalized from deep, shooting nearly 44 percent to ASU’s 37 percent behind 5-10 three-point shooting from senior guard Justin Bibbins and a perfect 4-4 from Barefield.

There’s no doubt that ASU has the talent and capability to turn things around, especially considering the down to the wire nature of all five of its losses, with none being closer to a victory than Thursday night.

“We’re fine,” Martin said. “A lot of people think this is the end of the world because we lost this game but we’re fine…but no matter what we’re going to stay true to ourselves and we’re going to get in the gym every day and we’re going to fix this, trust me.”